HUNTING NEW OPTION IN BALANCE BETWEEN PAINKILLER'S HELP, AND ABUSE

WASHINGTON - Scientists are hunting new ways to help millions of pain
sufferers - from addiction-resistant narcotics to using brain
scanners for biofeedback - amid a worrisome rise in abuse of today's
top prescription painkillers.

The good news: Only a tiny fraction of patients who are appropriately
prescribed the most powerful painkillers - drugs known as opioids,
including morphine, Vicodin, fentanyl and Oxycontin - ever will
become dependent on them.

And scientists told the National Institutes of Health last week that
those few who are vulnerable tend also to suffer such psychiatric
disorders as depression and anxiety, giving doctors a clue about
which patients need closer monitoring.

Opioids "are not dangerous if you know how to use them properly,"
stressed Dr. Nora Volkow, chief of NIH's National Institute on Drug
Abuse. "We need to develop the knowledge that maximizes our ability
to use them properly."

Amid fears that rising painkiller abuse will spark a backlash against
pain sufferers, Volkow organized a two-day meeting involving several
hundred scientists and primary care physicians, to bring the latest
science on pain and addiction to doctors struggling to balance the
drugs' clear benefits and potential harm.

Some form of chronic pain affects one of every three or four adults
worldwide. The government says one in 10 Americans suffers pain that
lasts a year or more. For millions, pain is severe enough to be
disabling; up to 6 million patients are on long-term opioid therapy.
It's not just a question of suffering: Serious pain can actually
worsen recovery from various ailments.

How many need opioids but don't get them? Those numbers are hard to
come by, but "pain is really under-treated in our society," opioid
specialist Dr. Christopher Evans of the University of California, Los
Angeles, told the NIH meeting.

By some estimates, as many as 40 percent of cancer patients and the
terminally ill don't even get those medications.

At the same time, prescription drug abuse, particularly of opioid
painkillers, is on the rise. One in 10 high school seniors admits to
popping Vicodin for nonmedical purposes, and recent studies suggest
about 2.2 million people age 12 and older first abused painkillers in
the past year, outpacing new marijuana users. Some 415,000 people
received treatment for painkiller abuse last year, Evans said.

So the hunt is on for pain relief that minimizes the abuse risk - not
just for the 2 percent of pain patients who might become dependent,
but to discourage theft or other diversion of the drugs.

"We really need to get smarter," said Dr. Pamela Palmer, director of
pain research at the University of California, San Francisco, who
laments that the only way now to tell how patients are using
painkillers is "making people pee in a bottle to see if the drug I
prescribed is in there."

Under research now:

Pain Therapeutics Inc.'s Remoxy is in late-stage clinical trials to
see if it offers an abuse-resistant version of oxycodone, the
ingredient in Oxycontin. Oxycontin tablets are supposed to slowly
dissolve for long-term pain relief, but abusers crush them and snort
or inject the powder for a fast high. Remoxy is a thick gelatin
version of oxycodone - crushing it just yields goo.

Also being studied is a combination of naltrexone, a drug used to
reduce alcohol craving, with oxycodone. The extra drug should tamp
down oxycodone's brain-stimulating effect, Palmer said, but one
question is whether that also will diminish pain relief.

Another approach now in early trials pairs technology with tiny
tablets of a hospital-strength opioid, sufentanil, redesigned to
dissolve almost instantly under the tongue. A computerized dispenser,
the size of a remote control, is programmed with the patient's dose
of Nanotabs and records how much is used and how often, information
the doctor would require before allowing refills or adjusting doses,
says Palmer, who is working with manufacturer AcelRx Pharmaceuticals.

Better would be drugs that more selectively target the brain
receptors that react to opioids, blocking multiple ones at the same
time so that it's harder to develop tolerance or suffer withdrawal.
While that is still years away, an initial attempt worked in rats,
and NIDA will push additional research to speed human trials, Volkow
said. "That would be an amazing thing."

Then there's the non-drug approach: Omneuron Inc. and Stanford
University researchers are trying to teach patients to control how
much pain they feel by scanning their brains and showing them the
real-time MRI images as they try out different techniques.

"The brain is built to be able to modulate its pain-control
processes," says Omneuron chief executive Christopher deCharms.
"We're teaching people to gain conscious control."

The first study, with a few chronic pain sufferers plus healthy
people given painful zaps, suggests the approach may relieve pain
right after participants are trained. Now the question is whether the
pain relief is real and lasts. A larger trial to test that is under way.

EDITOR'S NOTE - Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for
The Associated Press in Washington.